CHOCO HASHBERRY 1000w DE HPS CLOSET SCROG

This is a Legal Prop 215 Grow
1st time as well, so sit down and burn some dank with me on my exciting journey!
Open to all suggestions as I'm always looking to improve

Strain: Dark Heart Nursery - Chocolate Hashberry and Platinum OG
Light: Veg - 400w MH, Flower - 1000w HPS (Planning to Go Double Ended bulbs if my temps stay right through veg)
Hydro Kit: Waterfarm - Extra 1/4" holes drilled
Nutes: GH 3 Part for Veg, Lucas Formula after a week or so into flower
Space: Closet (89"x 25"x 99")
Air: 434 CFM Wind King 6", Phresh carbon filter

2 Waterfarms, currently building DWC to house 2 more plants to put in there with the others. (had to take out the shelves and cut some exhaust holes today so I could expand my grow space and accomodate bigger lights to flower bigger buds )

Here they are as freshly transplanted rockwool based clones into the waterfarm. Choco Hash on the left, Platinum OG on the right. The closeups are of the chocohash clone definitely showing a lot more vigor right out of the gate.

First round of LST on both.
Made a lot of newb mistakes in these early on stages such as not covering the drip ring or having it low enough, then covering it with foil which probably created hotspots (although I didn't see any adverse effects to my plants from that). And then worst of all I started it on nutes upon transplanting and had my PPMs fluctuating somewhere between 400-800 before I realized I was nuteburning and switched to plain water to flush and started them back up on half nutes. This post and it's pics are painful to put up, but I'll put them up anyway. At least I learned a valuable lesson which is never give nutes in week 1 haha. Here they are at the end of week 1, not looking great, a little salt buildup on the bottom leaves, kinda funky looking LST job (remember this is my first grow I realize I kinda started EVERYTHING too early but I get lucky) but, things will be looking up in a post or two, so bear with these sad pictures and learn from my mistakes!



First two shots of the choco hashberry tie down and the PLT OG the closest to the camera in the 3rd. Side by side you can see them in the 4th pic, where I made my biggest mistake of all and mistook nute deficiency for Cal/Mg deficiency and foliar fed them. Everything got worse after that one foliar spray and threw the bottle away, flushed both systems with plain ph'd water for a day, then changed it out for plain water and some Vermi-T and ran that for 3 days.

Week 2, first week of recovery from my week 1 mishaps. Despite said mishaps, Choco Hashberry still going strong, hasn't skipped a beat, growing nearly horizontally in a T due to the early LST I gave it. Hashberry is the bigger plant on the right. The Platinum OG is taking a bit longer to repair itself, as it didn't take the abuse as well as the choco did, but at least I am seeing more green then burn on the new growth.

its your 1st grow just let them grow and learn what to look for and places you could improve for the next time. when your doing new things its best to learn the basics, this way the more advanced things will come much easier. the foil thing i wouldn`t recommended it because i have seen what light burn is all about, and most of the time people think its nute burn.

End of Week 2.
What a difference! The plain water flush helped stabilize my plants and once I started adding Vermi-T to the mix, they started greening up again all over! Things are looking up, Choco Hashberry just poked it's taproot out into the res. Started them on 1/2 strength nutes today. 300ppm and a drop of superthrive in both.

Thanks for the words of wisdom SeedHo. I switched out the aluminum foil for Panda Film a few days ago and it looks a lot better and is easier to work with now. The growth really took off once I was able to get my nute mix right again. I worked both plants up to 400ppm from 300 over 3 days and they are LOVING the slow increase of nutes. Everytime I check the ppms they are either exactly where it was or 10-20 off in either direction. Right now the Platinum OG is hovering at 420! Almost time for it's freshwater top up though so I'm not worrried at all.

Here's what that looks like now

Here's what the LST job looks like on the chocohashberry. I also supercropped the stem on the right early. You can see how it's thicker than all the rest and superrr purple. This strain is a purply one, just genetics I believe. I'm getting a super nice menorah/bush effect right now which I think will make my scrog even easier.

A few questions if anyone has any ideas

When should I put down my scrog screen? I plan to veg around 2 months total.
I'm kind of just trying out training methods as I go along, seeing which ones suit me/my plants/my space more. The Platinum OG responded well to topping, and I just FIMed the choco hasberry on the thinner side to see how that does, so far it looks like it will respond well to it.
I'm just not sure if I should put down my scrog screen down now or if I should wait til the plant gets bigger.

A couple pics of my setup and another one of the super bushy choco hash. Temps holding steady around 73 with the 400mh on, and fans on low, so I am optimistic about being about to run the double ended 1000w in flower, seems like I will have plenty of air flow, I cut 2 6in holes in the wall and put a fan in one of them and I can put a fan in the other if I REALLY need to. For right now though it's got plenty of passive intake and by the time its ready for the flip it will be winter here and temps will be perfect inside.

Another week and a lot of new, strong, growth. They are in week 3 and are starting to fill out. I just changed the CHB's res from the half strength mix I was using and added protekt to my solution. PPMs sitting around 710 right now and I'm a little nervous but I'll be watching her I think she's really ready for the full mix of nutes now. I'll change the platinum OG tomorrow, she's drinking considerably less and ppm is stable at 350. I think she wants a few more days for stronger roots so I'll go up easy on her, I think 600 on the next change should be fine. I've got an airstone sitting in 2 gallons of water right now to let the chlorine evap.

Here's a great side by side comparison of their growth in 6 days (since my last post update) platinum og topped twice and super cropped once 2 days ago in that pic to encourage more bushing

Just wanted to say as a long time reader and newly active member of the RIU community, much of the inspiration I have with approaching my first grow ever comes from reading what you guys post on this site. I've been waiting forever to do this (had to get somewhere I could do it legally!) and now that I'm delving in I think I have truly found a worthwhile hobby to add to my list. The best part about this so far is learning new things on RIU, putting them into practice, and then watching nature take place! All advice is ALWAYS welcome, in fact I encourage it.
Thanks for stopping by and taking a look!

Here are a couple updates at 1 month veg.


I supercropped the Plt. OG in my last post about a week ago to give the chocoberry time to catch up in height...I also fimmed it a couple days before the supercrop...so now those fimmed tops are starting to grow (because the stems had to heal first) and it has just about bounced back all the way and is taller than the Choco again, but this time more bushy. Added an extra airstone to the platinum's res for a total of 2 4" cylinder stones for extra air to the roots. It seems to be responding very well to this.
Supercrop Job: held up a couple of the stems in the beginning with chopsticks if they looked like they needed some help
Heres the fim:

Also added protekt and h2o2 to my nute regimen.

The chocohashberry is just chugging along as usual, a big bushy monster right now with LOADS of nodes everywhere. I tried to get a couple of good pics of that view from the bottom up so you can see just how crazy it is getting in there.
Here's the stem of the chocohash up close

Here's a side by side of the Platinum OG when it was fimmed and supercropped, and then a week later...I basically just pinched and bent every tall stem around the edge at a 90 degree angle until I felt a bit of breakage and them there so all the small shoots in the middle would actually get a chance

then wait a week....

voila!

My stems are no longer fragile and lanky. Halfway breaking them like that is telling the plant to put some more consideration on being strong before getting tall. Another week and I will see how the fim will truly affect it's shape, i'm expecting a much thicker canopy as veg goes on.